dimarts, 23 d’abril de 2013

So today is Saint Jordi's Day once more. That means Books and Roses galore in Catalonia! By far the most beautiful traditional celebration I have seen during my short time in this world - if you don't know what I'm talking about click here for last year's info!

Anyway, this celebration is also taking off in other parts of the world and this weekend as part of this, and the ongoing cause to show to the world that Catalans are normal peace-loving folk, not a nasty greedy bunch of nationalists, the Catalans have hit London.

I'm a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in (soon-to-be-independent) Catalonia. One of today's exercises consisted in completing the gaps in various sentences. One said "Every day he has to go ____ those stairs". For me the answer was clearly "up", but all my (teenage) students answered with "down". Obviously this is also correct but it leaves food for thought, doesn't it ?

24 years after
leaving Maggie’s UK, and just when I thought I could sleep without
nightmares, and suddenly everybody in Tortosa wants to know who she was and why
the English are so obsessed with her. So here goes, my totally subjective
opinion on why half the country hate her .... (hopefully shorter than the above
Catalan version!)

To start on a
balanced note, I’ll say, OK, maybe the UK in the 70s was stuck in a rut and
needed a big shake-up. OK, maybe freeing up the work market and taking steps to
speed up public services could give a good result. It’s true that in the 21st
century UK, bureaucracy is at a low, and it’s (relatively) easy to get a job compared
to other countries – also relatively easy to lose one.

However, all this
“modernization” of the UK society has come at too high a cost. A social
experiment which didn’t take into account the people themselves. Anyway,
a few reasons why people don’t like her:...

Her refusal to
listen to the public protests asking the UK govt to cut ties with South Africa, so as to try and force the end of apartheid and the freeing of Mandela.

The war – the war
with Argentina increased her popularity no end, especially as it was a clear
win, unlike modern wars. However, there’ll always be those lefty pacifists
spreading conspiracy theories – that there were other solutions, that the govt
had been warned about Argentina’s preparations but did nothing ...

Her constant
bickering with the Europeans also gained her a lot of support back home but did
nothing for the future of the European Union. For better or for worse. But if
you don’t want in, get out. Nothing worse than somebody (UK) being at a party
but refusing to let the music play!

However, what I
really want to mention here is her out and out attack on industries and public
services. Destroying, literally, hundreds of thousands of jobs in shipbuilding,
steel, coal, nationalised industries. With nothing to offer these people in exchange.
However much some kind of shake-up may have been necessary, you cannot
renovate an industrial way of life with no negotiations, plans or alternatives
for the people affected. Entire cities were decimated through this, becoming
the ghost towns of the north of England, where two whole generations have now
lived off govt “handouts”. When Cameron moans about the costs of social
security payments and the people “happy” to live off them, he must remember who
put them there. If you leave someone on the dole for 20 years, and their kids
grow up seeing this as “normal”, it’s obvious that the work ethic of the people
will disappear. People who were originally embarrassed to be claiming the dole,
their kids now see it as their only alternative. The “free market” was supposed
to sort this out, but it didn’t, of course. The market only works for everybody
if there is some kind of control, and support and encouragement for the unlucky
ones.

To cap it all, it’s
clear that most of the industrial conflicts were provoked by Thatcher for
political reasons. The 150,000 miners who eventually lost their jobs (and now watch as we import expensive coal from abroad), were pushed into a strike as they
knew if they went under, their communities would do. And did. Thatcher believed,
in her erotic dreams, that the unions were after some kind of marxist
revolution when really all they wanted was more money, better conditions and less work. She set up
the conditions to destroy them and their will to fight. The miners called a
strike and lasted a year, but lost everything. The police tactics were horrendous
in a civilised society, thus losing our faith in another public institution.

Thatcher closed
down most public industry and privatized the rest. We now have dozens of
hopeless private companies running essential services and making a fortune through
exuberant pricing.

Bankers and
stockbrokers and the like, did well. The City of London did well – until recently.
But this “success” did not trickle down to those at the bottom. Never before
has the UK society been so divided. It’s alright Thatcher’s fans claiming she
opened up society for everyone to be able to move up, a meritocracy, but it
just isn’t true. The market system needs to offer suport, help and
encouragement too (not just dole money to sit at home). When I went to
university, there were no fees and I got a grant for my expenses. Now fees
currently run at 9,000 pounds per year! Try moving off the bottom rung if you
can!

She was one of
the last, and few, politicians to have clear convictions. However, having seen the
results, I think I prefer them to have fewer convictions and to be flexible, adaptable, willing to listen to the
people and their reality, rather than to follow a no-U-turn-possible crusade.

Other Big Moments
in the 80s, were when 10 IRA prisoners died on hunger strike – terrorists, of
course, but still – could there have been another way out? The infamous law,
Clause 28, which tried to do away with homosexuality by hiding it! From what I
recall, it forbade public bodies to offer support, or publicise anything to do
with homosexuality – i..e couldn’t be mentioned in school books, gay groups
couldn’t use public buildings for meetings etc. And, finally, the Poll Tax.
Changing local taxation from a property based one (higher the value of your
house, the more you pay) to a set fee for every person on local council
register. An unfair and unjustified change which led to huge public protests.
Seeing that there seats in parliament were in danger at the next elections, her
“colleagues” stabbed her in the back and moved on. A pathetic end to her
career.

I have to admit
the night she resigned, I toasted with Catalan “cava”- so many people I know
have been hurt by Thatcher’s policies. But not now. I’ve moved on, but I can
perfectly understand those back in the UK celebrating or buying crazy Witch
songs.

One of the best things (for me) about tweeting from CatalanVoices is that I get to "chat" with folk from all over the world. And, what do we talk about? Well, when I can, music! So making the most of it, and my natural attraction for all-things-Hobbit, I've asked the New Zealand tweeter for a list of cool NZ bands. This is the first one I've checked out :)

In December 2011, Sweden set up an "official" national Twitter account where every week a different citizen would be allowed to tweet about their own life and thoughts, thus allowing for an open, democratic and un-official vision of Sweden to be shared around the world. People raved about the idea and it's been a great success (as this article shows). Since then, many countries have started their own similar projects, and now so have Catalonia! It only started 2 weeks back but it looks like a great idea. The webpage, here, gives some idea of the objectives and how it works, but basically it's just to build up a piece-by-piece jigsaw of Catalan life, aims, concerns, through the subjective eyes of the people who live, or have lived, here and get this message outside of our frontiers to the rest of the world (hence the choice of language, English).